The open source OpenStack project is out with a new milestone release today, advancing the state of cloud technologies. The OpenStack Havana platform includes new orchestration and monitoring capabilities and it improves on existing compute, storage and networking functions.

Among the many contributors to OpenStack development, Linux vendor Red Hat tops the list as measured by volume of code contributions. For the Havana release, Red Hat made 3,381 code commits, which represent 21 percent of the code for Havana.

Tim Burke, VP Cloud Computing and Virtualization Development at Red Hat, explained to Datamation that with the Havana release the focus for Red Hat was about including more enterprise-level features. Burke said that OpenStack isn't just for test labs now, it is actually being geared up to for large scale real world deployments.

Among the key new additions in OpenStack Hava is the Heat orchestration project.

OpenStack Havana also introduces the Ceilometer monitoring effort, which will also be helpful as part of Red Hat's overall cloud management efforts. Burke explained that Ceilometer provides a way to monitor low-level cloud system events.

"But that's just data, the bigger question is how do you connect data and turn it into policy," Burke said.

That's where Red Hat's CloudForms technology will come into play. Burke explained that an upcoming release of CloudForms will serve as the upper level business intelligence and policy engine. So CloudForms will tie into OpenStack Ceilometer for business rules and business logic.

The OpenStack Havana release also includes the Horizon dashboard that can be used visualize Ceilometer data. Burke said that Red Hat is positioning CloudForms for the cloud consumer.

"Someone could use Horizon to configure the low level cloud infrastructure, then layer on top of that CloudForms, which is where policy can be set up," Burke explained.

Oslo

Another key OpenStack Havana effort that Red Hat has been participating in is the Oslo common code library initiative. Burke explained that there is a lot of duplicate code in OpenStack, and with Oslo the goal has been to condense it down into a series of common code libraries. "When you common factor libraries and code you can have better quality code, security and consistency," Burke explained.

Tuskar

Looking forward to the next release of OpenStack, codenamed Icehouse, Red Hat is working on a new open source project called 'Tuskar' that is set to further improve cloud management. Tuskar will be about managing racks of systems, which could include hundreds of cloud servers.

"Tuskar is the next generation of Horizon and will be able to create resource classes that enable customers to flexibly build and manage cloud deployments," Burke said.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Datamation and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist